CERN Physicist Warns About Uranium ShortagePeak uranium? I've known (and probably you as well) about this for a while, but here is a decent article about it. I love that they broach the "zombie" issue, LOL.Shortage

"Uranium mines provide us with 40,000 tons of uranium each year. Sounds like that ought to be enough for anyone, but it comes up about 25,000 tons short of what we consume yearly in our nuclear power plants. The difference is made up by stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium — which should be completely used up by 2013. And the problem with just opening more uranium mines is that nobody really knows where to go for the next big uranium lode. Dr. Michael Dittmar has been warning us for some time about the coming shortage (PDF) and has recently uploaded a four-part comprehensive report on the future of nuclear energy and how socioeconomic change is exacerbating the effect this coming shortage will have on our power consumption. Although not quite on par with zombie apocalypse, Dr. Dittmar's final conclusions paint a dire picture, stating that options like large-scale commercial fission breeder reactors are not an option by 2013 and 'no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.'"

Jotapay wrote:Peak uranium? I've known (and probably you as well) about this for a while, but here is a decent article about it. I love that they broach the "zombie" issue, LOL.

"'no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.'"

This part was particulary heartwarming. How will the techno-cornucopians answer?

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…"Sir Winston Churchill

Beliefs are what people fall back on when the facts make them uncomfortable.

The population WILL be reduced one way or another. The real question is, how far can we keep growing beyond the current carrying capacity, which in turn will determine how low the NEW carrying capacity will be after the collapse.

Why do we have to go through this mantra every year or so on PO.com? Technology is not static and the reactors being built today are so much more efficient that their Uranium demand is far lower than it was 40 years ago. Unfortunately people pop off opinions based on that 40 year old technology as if it were the only game in town.

Windmills, Solar panels and yes even fossil fuel power plants have all advanced greatly in the fuel efficiency/cost area's. Fission is no different, it has advanced as much or more as the other options.

I should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write, balance accounts, build a wall, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Ultimately, the collider aims to create conditions like they were one trillionth to two trillionths of a second after the Big Bang, which scientists think marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. Physicists also hope the collider will help them see and understand other suspected phenomena, such as dark matter, antimatter and supersymmetry.

Cern's Director General Rolf Heuer said yesterday's collisions were actually the side effect of the quick advances being made by the LHC during its startup phase.

He said that the scientists would be proceeding cautiously, just a driver would with the first production model of a new car."We'll never accelerate this the first time with a kick-start to its maximum velocity," he said. "It’s a great achievement to have come this far in so short a time. But we need to keep a sense of perspective – there’s still much to do before we can start the LHC physics programme.”

David Barney, a physicist working at Cern said: "It's quite amazing really, we never expected this to go so quickly. We're incredibly pleased, everything seems to be working excellently. The LHC hasn't actually accelerated particles yet - it hasn't made them go any faster than they were when they came into the tunnel.

"Cern intends to collide them at higher energy next week. It's going incredibly well and we don't really know what to expect next."

I'm trying to think of a good way to compare the Hubble Telescope vs the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Both are peering pretty seriously into the the Big, Mysterious, F---er called the Universe.

Who here actually believes experiments like NIF, Cern, ITER, etc. won't lead to important basic discoveries?

Interestingly, when they were doing repairs on this thing they discovered someone had dropped a French baguette down into the machine's bowels. I had to laugh at that, wouldn't it have been something if we all died in a black hole because some frenchie dropped his lunch.

Also, one scientist is theorizing that when they create the god particle thing, what will happen is the same particle from the future will go back in time and smash into the particle here in the present.

EnergyUnlimited wrote:Tanada,I do not see much room for advancement in power generation by burning of FF or by conventional nuclear technology.

These are all based on boiling water to produce steam and run turbines and heat exchanger or turbine designs are already about as good as they can be.

I am not talking about boiling water and using steam turbines, I am talking about fuel consumption in modern reactors with very high conversion ratio's approaching unity. We now have the technology to produce as much fuel as we consume, with either Thorium/U-233 cycle or Uranium/Pu-239-241 cycle. Therefor there IS no Uranium shortage, at least not for the modern reactors now being built or planned to be built.

I should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write, balance accounts, build a wall, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

EnergyUnlimited wrote:Tanada,I do not see much room for advancement in power generation by burning of FF or by conventional nuclear technology.

These are all based on boiling water to produce steam and run turbines and heat exchanger or turbine designs are already about as good as they can be.

I am not talking about boiling water and using steam turbines, I am talking about fuel consumption in modern reactors with very high conversion ratio's approaching unity. We now have the technology to produce as much fuel as we consume, with either Thorium/U-233 cycle or Uranium/Pu-239-241 cycle. Therefor there IS no Uranium shortage, at least not for the modern reactors now being built or planned to be built.

Those three links should give you a basic understanding that we have had the technology for thirty or more years to build fission reactors that produce as much or more fissionable material as they consume within the framework of a light water reactor, the most common type. If you are willing to do away with the water as a coolant you can get some pretty substantial breeding ratio's with fast neutron reactors cooled with gas like CO2 or Helium, and those cooled with metals like Sodium, Potassium, Bismuth and Lead, or even those which do away with separate core and coolant systems like the Molten Salt breeder reactors.

I should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, write, balance accounts, build a wall, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, pitch manure, program a computer, cook, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.